Study Finds U.S. Charter Quality Gap
By Todd Engdahl, EDUCATION NEWS COLORADO
In what’s billed as the first truly national study of charter school quality, researchers at Stanford University found charter student academic growth lagging that of students in traditional public schools.
The research found that 17 percent of charters are academically superior to regular public schools, about half show no difference and 37 percent have worse results than regular schools.
“This study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their TPS [traditional public school] counterparts. Further, tremendous variation among charters is the norm, not the exception. The problem of quality is the most pressing issue that charter schools and their supporters face,” the report said.
Included in the study were the Denver, Chicago and District of Columbia school districts, plus charters in 13 states. The research was done by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford and covered the 2003-04 to 2007-08 school years. The study compared charter student longitudinal performance on statewide reading and math assessments against comparable statistical composites (called “virtual twins”) of regular students.
“Clearly there is some concern,” said Margaret Raymond, CREDO director, during a conference call Monday. “The real story there is that there’s a tremendous amount of variation in charter school quality.”
* The Denver comparisons were somewhat more positive than the national findings:
* The typical charter student “learns significantly more than their virtual counterparts” in reading and math.
* But, there was no significant difference for black students, nor was there for poor students or English language learners.
* Hispanic charter students did better and math but were about the same as traditional students in reading.
Raymond said the study included only Denver data because CREDO wasn’t able to negotiate a contract with the Colorado Department of Education on use of statewide data.
Nationally, the report found that “Two subgroups fare better in charters than in the traditional system: students in poverty and ELL students,” but, “Students not in poverty and students who are not English language learners on average do notably worse than the same students who remain in the traditional public school system.”
Raymond said the fact that black and Hispanic charter students aren’t doing as well as poor and ELL students isn’t necessarily a contradiction because there isn’t complete overlap between the two sets of groups.
Charters in Chicago, Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri generally performed better than traditional schools, while Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas charters underperformed.
Charters in California, the District of Columbia, Georgia and North Carolina showed no difference.
Overall, the study covered 70 percent of the charter students in the U.S. There are some 4,700 charter schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia, with about 1.4 million students.
The study also found that students in elementary and middle school charters “have significantly higher rates of learning than their peers in traditional public schools,” but the reverse is true for multi-grade level charters and high schools.
Commenting on the policy implications of the study, the authors concluded:
* “Simply put, neither market mechanisms nor regulatory oversight have been a sufficient force to deal with underperforming schools. At present there appears to be an authorizing crisis in the charter school sector.”
* “The apparent reluctance of authorizers to close underperforming charters ultimately reflects poorly on charters schools as a whole.”
* “It is time to concentrate equally on removing the barriers to exit.”
The CDE recently released a new statistical and achievement study of all charters in the state. That study also found no across-the-board academic advantage for either charter or traditional schools. (See this EdNews story for more details and links.)
Colorado has 141 charter schools enrolling more than 56,000 students. Denver currently has 21 charters, according to the district website. The CREDO study included 6,672 DPS charter students.
The CREDO study also examined the relationship between state charter policies and the academic success of charter students, concluding: “States with caps limiting the number of charter schools reported significantly lower academic results than states without caps limiting charter growth. States that have the presence of multiple charter school authorizers also reported lower academic results than states with fewer authorizers in place. Finally, states with charter legislation allowing for appeals of previously denied charter school applications saw a small but significant increase in student performance.”
Raymond said CREDO is doing further research that will examine the impact on achievement of other charter school characteristics and organizational factors.
Distributed by Colorado Capitol Reporters
